Warren Ewens elected Fellow of Royal Society
For excellence in population genetics, Dr.
Warren John Ewens, Professor of Biology, was elected as a
Fellow in the prestigious Royal
Society, a scientific foundation based in the United Kingdom,
in May, 2000.
Dr. Ewens has made major contributions in three main areas of
population genetics theory and its applications. His formula describing
the properties of a sample of genes from a selectively neutral
locus have been highly influential in evolutionary genetics, probability
theory and combinatorial theory. He established and proved the
modern version of Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection
and the evolutionary optimality principle flowing from it. More
recently, in human genetics he developed the transmission disequilibrium
test which has become widely used in searching for genes involved
with complex diseases.